Showroom 2DOF Race Simulator Wipermotors, Arduino Uno and Monster Moto Shield

The Inspiration:
A while ago my colleague and friend @JonBakhol where talking of making a racing simulator and found out on this forum that this was very doable and affordable.
We both decided on a 2DOF with shoulder mounted rods, wiper motors, Arduino Uno and Monster Moto shield.

The Plan:
I already had a race seat from game racer from this I used the chair and the steering wheel mounting plate.

The steering wheel I’m using is the G27.
The design I went for you can see here:


The stuff:
To make the top frame I used aluminium pipe 30x30x2mm and for the props I used 20x2 aluminium strip. We ordered this from a local website.

The bottom frame is made of 35x35x2mm steel pipe. We “borrowed” this from an old workbench in our company which we were not using any more.

The nuts and bold we bought from a local hardware store.

The Arduino Uno(s), Monster Moto Shield(s) and Seat belts we ordered via Aliexpress.

The wiper motors I used are from the Citroen Jumpy or Peugeot Expert and the joint between the top and bottom frame became a CV joint from the drive shaft of a Mercedes B, I ordered these parts from a second-hand car parts web site.

The 10kOhms potentiometers I got from @JonBakhol, I think he bought them from a kind of Radio-Shack.

The power supply I used is a 12VDC 30A LED power supply, which I ordered from a webshop.

The build:
When the Arduino Uno came in I tried to connect it to my PC and connected a 12VDC power supply.
I shouldn’t have done that because I burned it. Although the power adaptor I used mentioned it was 12 VDC it, when I checked it with the multimeter it gave 18 VDC which was too much. So I ordered another one. Actually for the setup together with the Monster Moto board you don’t need separate power supply for the Arduino the 5V from the USB connection is enough.

The build of the top frame went well, although during the build I made some small changes to the design. Everything from the top frame is bolted together with mostly M6 bolts.



Between the top frame and the chair I used PVC high pressure pipe round 32mm to raise the seat a bit and I have clamped my ButtKicker Gamer2 to one of these PVC struts, which works well.


To find the centre of gravity we used this procedure:
https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...-of-gravity-to-balance-a-motion-simulator.55/

This goes better with some help .

The rods for the shoulder mounts between the top frame and the wiper motors are made of M8 treaded rods, M8 extension nuts, some normal M8 nuts, M8 washers, M8 big washers, M8 rod ends and 20mm aluminium pipe.
The nice thing is that the M8 washers fit exactly inside the inner diameter of the 20mm aluminium pipe.
Which make these rods very sturdy and light.


A while back I already made the following mods to my G27 steering wheel:
I mounted the standard pedals of the G27 steering wheel in reverse. See for example

For the frame of the pedals I used an steel angle profile of 25x25x2 mm with slotted holes.

I also replaced the springs inside the pedals for stronger ones for a better feel, see for example
https://www.mardomedia.nl/gteye-verenset-voor-logitech-g25-g27-g29-g920.html

And I improved the feel of the shifter, see
,
this is a really simple, nice and cheap improvement.
And finally I added an external handbrake which I also bought from Aliexpress, for the connections see

The bottom frame was made from 35x35mm steel pipe. For this I had to learn how to use an electric arc welder L. That came with a lot of swearing and cursing and a few electric shocks. But we finally made it. I kept the back narrow, so the plates between the wiper motors and rods can move freely.

At the foot end the bottom frame is wider for stability.
Add each corner I mounted adjustable levellers for stability and levelling off the bottom frame.


I managed to keep the angle for the shoulder mounted rods within the recommend angles from here:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/shoulder-mount-rod-angles.149/


I isolated the ground connection from the wiper motors as described here:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/wiper-motor-mandatory-ground-isolation.25/

I drilled an hole through the gear casing of the wiper motor, drilled a 3.2mm hole in the back of the axle and tapped M4 thread into the back of the axle.
In this threaded hole I screwed a M4 bold and, on the end of this bold I glued a piece of tubing.
The inner diameter of this tube was exactly the same as the diameter of the rod of the potentiometers I used. So if something goes haywire with the motors the potentiometers shouldn’t brake, but the fit is tight enough for normal operation (up till now anyway).


So for the electrical wiring I used this wiring diagram:

Which you can also find here:
https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/

I mounted the Monster Moto board and the Arduino inside an old PC power supply housing from which I reused the coolers.

For the wires between the Monster Moto board and the terminal blocks I used 2,5mm2 solid core installation wire. For each lead to the wiper motors I used 3x1,5mm2 flexible cable(which might be a bit overkill). I strongly recommend to use ferrules on all wires and cable to your potentiometers, wiper motors and power supply because I did a lot of rewiring during testing and setup. The ferrules make this much easier. For example see:
https://en.traconelectric.com/produ...er--tinned--yellow-6mm2--l113mm--d13-5mm--PVC



Do make sure you have a good soldering iron with a clean new tip when soldering thick wire on the Monster Moto board, because I managed to ruin one board with a crappy soldering iron with a burned tip.

I used a separate 12V power supply for the cooling fans, also see the small modified one I used on top of the Monster Moto board. But do take care, the cooling on top of the Monster Moto board needs to be modified because some of the components are higher than the main IC’s which need the most cooling. You need a tight fit with cooling paste in between.



So finally it looks like this:


It needs some refinements but I’m still in the testing phase

The activation:
For programming the Arduino I used this instruction again:
https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/
This al went easy and without problems. Only I had my potentiometers wired the wrong way around.
But this was an easy fix.
Up till know I have been using the trail version of Simtools 2.0 in combination with the game “Life for Speed”. In the beginning I had some mayor problems with overshoots, but this was solved quickly with the help of the community , see this thread:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/2dof-sim-overshoot.12085/

So finally I got the game running well and here are my settings:
SMC3:


Simtools settings:
First the Interface Settings:


Then the Axis assignment settings:



I was told that Sway and Surge do the most for a 2DOF simulator so that’s way I set these to 40% each. If I set the Axis Limiting higher than 45% I get overshoots again.


Also to prevent overshoots it is very important to run the Tuning Center, I found this to be helpful:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/tuning-centre-and-axis-settings.240/
An these are my final settings:


The profile editor I left at 100%:


The conclusion:
It was really a lot of fun building the 2DOF racing simulator and when it finally worked I had a smile from ear to ear. And amazed I was able to do this.
Luckily the solutions to most of my issues and problem could be solved by the forum and the community.
But I still have some improvements to do, maybe some better motors
Also my top frame flexes a bit too much, so I’ll have to find a solution for that.
And off course if any of you read my thread and have some suggestions to improve my simulator, either hardware or software, I would really appreciate to receive these.